On 3rd November 2016, Facebook for Developers along with PlanX organized a one day workshop for the first time in Pakistan. Facebook for Developers is a community that helps you improve your apps, grow them, monetize them and also lets you build new platforms. The program also helps in publishing your application and advertises it through Facebook. As a result, it grows and reaches the maximum number of people all over the world.
The Strategist Product Partnership of Facebook, Sarim Aziz also joined the team. He told the media that due to this workshop, lots of exciting products and services will be built which will benefit not just the Pakistani market but also other markets all around the globe. The main purpose of the workshop was to spend time with the talent in the country and find ways to solve problems and methods to build products and services for engineers. In addition, he also told that this was the 6th workshop that they conducted throughout the world and they have seen great talent here in Pakistan.
It was a full-day workshop. Developers from Facebook product and other engineering teams were also present there. The people who attended the workshop were given instructions through code labs, updates on different Facebook platform products, and tech talks.
The director of PlanX, Hafsa Sorish also attended the event. She was amazed by the effect of the workshop as it proved to be a great learning experience for the developers in Pakistan. She said that they are thankful to Facebook for giving the IT industry of Pakistan a chance at this workshop. Moreover, she is also looking forward to continued efforts by Facebook in order to boost the developer’s community in Pakistan.
The three sub-workshops
Software engineers and product managers across different industries delivered the workshop. The attendants had a choice to attend any 1 out of 3 workshops which included React Native, Account Kit, and Bots on Messenger.
Andrey Belokrylov was the main trainer at the Account Kit workshop. Other trainers included software engineers from the Facebook Platform login team, software engineer identify tools team, and Ethan Goldman-Kirst. The workshop delivered knowledge about the main purpose of the development of the Account Kit and its usage. The basic information about registration, sign-ups and logins were discussed in this workshop.
Bots on Messenger was the second workshop. It is a very modern way to advertise and grow your application through which developers can communicate with their users through Facebook Messenger conversations. It helps users to engage with the bots more effectively. The workshop explained how to build a better product by using these services. It also explained the basic terms and conditions the bots have to follow. The developers were taught the basic steps to create bots. Hasnain Lakhani, a software engineer, Program Analysis at Facebook California and Adnan Majeed, a software engineer in the traffic team at Facebook hosted the workshop.
React Native was the third and the most advanced workshop. React Native was designed with an aim to help developers learn different skills which will enable them to write unique applications on both platforms, i.e. iOS and Android for JavaScript. It helps developers as they can share as much common code as possible without having the need to learn multiple programming languages. The workshop was delivered by Umair Sadiq, a software engineer at Facebook in Large Scale Distributed Systems and Abdullah Jibaly, software engineer Oculus at Facebook.
The chairman of Punjab IT Board, Dr. Umar Saif ended the workshop by a closing speech in which he stated:
“We need one tech startup from Pakistan to go big and become a billion dollar company and we will see investment pouring into our ecosystem. Facebook coming to Pakistan and arranging workshops for developers is definitely a step in the right direction”
Jennifer Fong Strategic Product Partnership at Facebook said:
“PlanX represents a lot of the community here and it’s very evident from today’s event that PlanX standsout as a world class accelerator. There are a lot of things that really stand out today from the developer’s community to their creativity.”
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